Canadian researchers have come one giant step closer to finding treatment for those with Alzheimer's disease, and even a preventative vaccine.

The team of researchers hail from Université Laval, CHU de Québec, and pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and was led by Dr. Serge Rivest, professor at Université Laval's Faculty of Medicine and researcher at the CHU de Québec research center.

A key part of Alzheimer's disease is the production of a toxic molecule called amyloid beta. The body's defenders, called microglial cells, cannot eliminate amyloid beta, and that's when senile plaques are formed.

But the new study gives the brain's immune cells a boost through monophosphoryl lipid A, called MPL, which is a vaccine that has already been proven safe through its use with GSK.

After giving mice with Alzheimer's symptoms weekly injections of MPL for 12 weeks, about 80 percent of senile plaques were eliminated. Also, the mice showed improvement in cognitive function.

According to the team, the MPL injection could not only slow the progression of the disease in patients already showing symptoms, but also be used as a preventative vaccine for those at risk.

I guess my writing was bad. I AM dead serious. I live in mortal fear that my constant, increasingly common, increasingly worse forgetfulness is leading up to full-blown Alzheimers. I can also throw in the fine experiences of being in a conversation with someone and realizing that I've forgotten their name. Or having someone ask me my phone number and realizing that all I've got is a null pointer instead of a number. Ditto for my address. It's a weird experience. It's not like I don't know the thing I'm trying to remember: I can feel it in there somewhere. I just can't find it. If something prompts me with the start of the data, I can reel off the rest immediately. I just lose the pointer.

I've tried various vitamins and supplements to no avail. If this stuff gets through testing and works, it would be a godsend.

You need to talk about it with your physician soon. While there's nothing that can cure it on the market, there are drugs that will slow it's progress. Since they can't reverse it, you need to start on them as soon as possible to preserve your mind as long as possible.

You are suffering short term memory loss due to having a sizeable brain tumor pushing your brain forward, I know because I have the same symptom from my inoperable golf ball sized brain tumor, you also by your post lack emotional sympathy, another sign because your tumor is causing bipolarism. That does sound a bit alarming does it not? But don't worry you have the option of having a few treatments that will cause greater damaged to the tissue around the tumor so you will not know who the hell you are any more if you don't become a living vegetable. Again don't worry as by the time you finish reading this chances are you will have forgotten this...........Welcome to my world.

FYI, forwarded this article to a PhD researcher friend whose focus is on Alzheimers. She says its been fairly exciting news to researchers for awhile, but no one thinks this is likely to actually be a cure. The treatments are effective on a particular model of Alzheimers that some people think isn't very accurate of human Alzheimers. More importantly, the treatment induces an inflammatory reaction that most likely would result in it being too dangerous to ever be approved as a human treatment :(

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